Elephants are using Tanzania’s first legally protected wildlife corridor, and camera traps have the pictures to show it. Over 15 months, cameras along the 8.7-mile route logged 529 elephant sightings, the Southern Tanzania Elephant Program (STEP) says. The route exists because 368 local landowners gave up part of their land.
At a glance
- Corridor: The Nyerere-Udzungwa Wildlife Corridor is about 8.7 miles long and 656 feet wide. The government designated it in April 2025 C.E.
- Evidence: Cameras recorded at least 1,440 mammals in 15 months, and 529 of them were elephants, according to STEP.
- Catch: Elephants have avoided a planned road underpass, and new buildings near the route could weaken the corridor.
What the cameras found
The corridor crosses the Kilombero Valley in southern Tanzania. It links Nyerere National Park to Udzungwa Mountains National Park. A Mongabay feature, republished by Good Good Good on Sept. 29, reported the camera results.
STEP began placing camera traps along the route in November 2023 C.E. Over the first 15 months, the images showed at least 1,440 mammals, including bushbuck, buffalo, serval, honey badgers, and Cape clawless otters. Elephants made up 529 of those sightings.
Up to 1,000 African savanna elephants spend part of the year in the Udzungwa Mountains, A-Z Animals reported. They climb to about 6,500 feet.
Bamboo high on the slopes feeds them in droughts. Natural salt licks supply minerals found nowhere else nearby.
How the wildlife corridor came together
Over about 50 years, forested routes between the two parks were turned into farmland, World Land Trust said. The Tanzanian government designated the corridor in April 2025 C.E. It was the first in the country to get that legal status.
Communities chose the route. STEP has worked on it since 2018.
In all, 368 landowners in Sole, Mang’ula, and Kanyenja set aside between 1,000 and 2,000 square meters each. That is about 10,800 to 21,500 square feet per owner. They were compensated nearly 2.2 billion Tanzanian shillings, about $880,000 at the time, Mongabay reported.
The feature does not say whether that sum is a total or a per-person figure.
Villagers and the group Reforest Africa have planted about 100,000 native trees of 30 species. Another 50,000 are planned. Landowners help manage the corridor through a committee.
What could still go wrong
The camera numbers need care. STEP’s figure may count repeat visits by the same elephants, and the feature does not say how individual animals were told apart. STEP’s own website lists 42 camera stations on the corridor, while the feature cites 59 cameras.
Elephants have also avoided a planned underpass beneath a busy, recently paved road. Crowds sometimes gather and push herds back. A petrol station is under construction nearby without an environmental impact assessment, and a hotel and bus station are planned.
Experts warn that this development could undermine the corridor. Villager seats on the management committee are seen as the best safeguard.
Fewer clashes between farmers and elephants are expected, but that has not been measured yet. The cameras show the corridor is working so far. They do not show that it will hold.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Mongabay via Good Good Good and World Land Trust
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Once extinct in the wild, more than 600 scimitar-horned oryx now roam Chad
- 180+ organizations join massive effort to restore 4.4M acres of Brazil’s Cerrado
- The Good News for Humankind archive on species recovery and rewilding
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